MODERN AMERICAN LITERATURE (English 3323.01)—Fall 2003

11:00-12:20 TR in Witherspoon 128

Dr. Deborah Wilson

Office: Witherspoon 145; office phone: 968-0482

@atu.edu

Office Hours: 12:30-2:00 TR, and by appointment MWF

Required texts:

Volume 2 of The Heath Anthology of American Literature, 4th ed.

The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton (1905)

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein (1933)

Go Down, Moses, by William Faulkner (1942)

Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison (1977)

Grade:

· Frequent unannounced quizzes on the assigned readings will constitute 25% of your grade. Being prepared for class is essential to your success in this course, and these quizzes will, I hope, provide the necessary spur to do the reading. Unless you have read the assigned texts, you can neither participate in nor follow class discussions, and those discussions will help you succeed in the other areas that make up your grade. There are NO MAKEUP QUIZZES. If you miss a quiz, you will receive a zero. I will drop one quiz grade during the semester as a means of compensating for an emergency.

· The mid-term and final exams will count 20% each. These tests will include a matching section in which you will be asked to identify authors and characters by excerpted quotations or descriptions. The majority of the exams will be short answer and essay questions, some of which I will give you in advance so you can prepare and organize your ideas. The final will cover only the second half of the course.

· And the remainder of your grade (35%) will come from two analytical essays (5-6 pages each; failure to meet the length requirement will lower your grade). You must get my advance approval for your topic. Late papers will be penalized. Essays are to be written according to current MLA style. These are NOT to be research papers but rather textual analyses that will indicate your ability to read carefully, to offer an interpretation of a SINGLE literary text (one from this syllabus) supported with evidence from that text, and, of course, to express yourself in clear, grammatical language. These essays are not to be biographical or historical. We will be discussing the papers further as you work on them. I will also have sample student essays available. Furthermore, I am available during office hours or by appointment to offer more individual assistance.

ATTENDANCE POLICY: You are allowed a total of FIVE absences for the entire semester. The only excused (that is, uncounted) absences will be university-excused ones. That constitutes OVER two entire weeks of the course. On the sixth absence, you will receive an F for the course. It is your responsibility to keep up with your absences. There will be no warning from me.

One other guaranteed way to fail this course is to cheat (which usually means plagiarism). Make certain that you understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid it by using proper methods of attribution and citation. Plagiarism will result in an F for the course, and must be reported to the Vice President for Academic Affairs. Just don’t do it. In both the fall and spring semesters of the last academic year, I caught students plagiarizing, one an entire essay, verbatim, from an online essay, and the other cutting and pasting from seven different sites. This semester I am requiring that, in addition to the hard copy of your essay, you must give me an electronic version, either on a disk or via e-mail.

It is my aim that you all succeed. There is no pleasure for me in your failure.

Readings: All assignments are due on the date listed. You will also find the anthology’s introductions to these authors and texts helpful. This is a tentative list of readings that, thanks to the unpredictability of life, will likely change in the course of the semester.

Thursday, August 21—Introduction; read and discuss “Desiree’s Baby,” by Kate Chopin (364-68)

Tuesday, Aug. 26— Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron” (723-30); Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s “A New England Nun” and “The Revolt of ‘Mother’” (749-67); Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Turned” (619-26). I am assuming most of you have already read Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”; if not, you need to read that story, too (608-19).

Thursday, Aug. 28—Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle” (334-62)

Sept. 2--begin Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth

Sept. 4--continue discussion of novel

Sept. 9--continue discussion of novel and assigned critical essays

Sept. 11--concluding discussion of novel and criticism; poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1180-88) and Robert Frost (1127-40)

Sept. 16—read pages 1189-90; poetry by Ezra Pound (1190-94, and Cantos XLV and LXXXI on 1208-12); T. S. Eliot (1361-89)

Sept. 18--poetry by Wallace Stevens (1505-15)

Sept. 23-- poetry by e. e. cummings (1351-61); Gertrude Stein readings from the anthology (1226-38)

Sept. 25—begin Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Sept. 30--continue discussion of ABT

Oct. 2--continue discussion of ABT

Oct. 7—finish discussion of ABT

Oct. 9— FIRST PAPER DUE ; excerpts from Stein videos

Oct. 14--MID-TERM EXAM

Oct. 16— Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (photocopy available in English department); Clifford Odets, Waiting for Lefty (1786-1805)

Oct. 21--Langston Hughes (1331-37 and 1598-1608); Zora Neale Hurston (1656-73); Blues Lyrics (1706-12)

Oct. 23-- Eudora Welty (photocopy of “Petrified Man”) and Flannery O’Connor (2112-24)

Oct. 23—begin William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses

Oct. 30—continue novel

Nov. 4--continue novel

Nov. 6--continue novel

Nov. 11—finish Faulkner discussions; poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks (2280-92), and Allen Ginsberg (2293-07)

Nov. 13— begin Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon

Nov. 18—continue novel

Nov. 20--continue novel

Nov. 25--finish novel

Nov. 27— THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

Dec. 2-- Alice Walker (2645-56), Maxine Hong Kingston (2960-80)

Dec. 4 —John Barth, Donald Barthelme (2821-46)

FINAL PAPERS DUE Monday, December 8^h, by 4:00 p.m.

FINAL EXAM TBA